Injuries report: At least one person in the State sustains a spinal cord injury every week, according to a report to be published tomorrow.
The majority of the injuries occur among 18 to 35-year olds, and road traffic accidents and falls are the main causes.
The injuries are devastating for those affected, with 70 per cent of those sustaining spinal cord injuries not returning to work, the report states.
Entitled The Reality of Living with Spinal Cord Injury, the report looks at the effects of the injury on the lives of the 1,200 people, mainly men, living with spinal cord injury in the State and the support services available. It shows that those who sustain a spinal cord injury have particular difficulties following discharge from rehabilitation with housing, interpersonal relationships, employment, transport and with having their personal care needs met.
Difficulties in securing financial assistance in particular add to the sense of isolation in the immediate aftermath of returning to the community.
Meanwhile, a fear of losing medical card entitlements is one of the main reasons why people with spinal cord injury do not return to the workplace.
The report was compiled by Spinal Injuries Ireland, a support group for those who have sustained injuries and an organisation which promotes the welfare of people who have sustained a spinal cord injury.
The chief executive of Spinal Injuries Ireland, Colm Whooley, will be calling at the publication of the report for the introduction of a series of initiatives to assist those with a spinal cord injury to live more independent lives.
Mr Whooley, who broke his back at the age of 21 in a motor bike accident more than two decades ago, said while people may think of the main impact of spinal cord injury as an inability to walk, the injury also has a huge emotional and psychological impact on the injured person.
"The way you are seen is different. You are not seen as the same person. That can be very difficult for people," he said.
"The real difficulty is after you go home after months in the National Rehabilitation Hospital. In the hospital you have a very supportive environment and are surrounded by people in wheelchairs but when you go home to your own community, then it really hits you," he added.
A lot of people, he said, "disappear into the woodwork" after going home and do nothing.
"But with appropriate supports many of them could be returning to work," he said.
Spinal Injuries Ireland recently recruited an outreach worker to visit people with spinal cord injury in their homes after they were released from hospital, and already it has been making a difference. "We hope to employ more if we get the funding," he said.
Meanwhile, research is taking place across the globe in an attempt to find a mechanism which would enable people paralysed by spinal cord injury to walk again.
Recently researchers at a US military hospital succeeded in rejoining severed spinal cords in rats by using a laser technique.
While the research was described as very encouraging by Ashley Poynton, a spinal surgeon at the national spinal injuries unit in Dublin's Mater Hospital, he warned it was sometimes difficult to replicate success in an animal model in humans.
He said the day when doctors would be able to repair or regenerate spinal cord was "quite some time away still. Hopefully, we will see something in the next five to 10 years," he said.